calumet.

The chief presented the dancer with a fine fur robe when he ended; and, taking the calumet from his hand, gave it to an old man in the circle. This one passed it to the next, and so it went around the huge ring until all had held it. Then the chief approached the white men.

"Blackgown," he said, "and you, Frenchman, I give you this peace-pipe to be your safeguard wherever you go among the tribes. It shall be feathered with white plumes, and displaying it you may march fearlessly among enemies. It has power of life and death, and honor is paid to it as to a manitou. Blackgown, I give you this calumet in token of peace between your governor and the Illinois, and to remind you of your promise to come again and instruct us in your religion."

The explorers slept soundly all night in the chief's lodge, feeling as safe as among Christian Indians of the north, who stuck thorns in a calendar to mark Sundays and holy days. Next morning the chief went with several hundred of his people to escort them to their canoes; but it was three o'clock in the afternoon before the voyageurs, dropping down stream, saw the last of the friendly tribe.

Day after day the boats moved on without meeting other inhabitants. Mulberries, persimmons, and hazelnuts were found on the shores. They passed the mouth of the Illinois River without knowing its name, or that it flowed through lands owned by the tribe that had given them the peace-pipe. Farther on, the Mississippi made one of its many bends, carrying them awhile directly eastward, and below great rocks like castles. As the canoes ran along the foot of this east shore, some of the voyageurs cried out. For on the face of the cliff far up were two painted monsters in glaring red, green, and black; each as large as a calf, with deer horns, blood-colored eyes, tiger beard, a human face, and a body covered with scales. Coiled twice around the middle, over the head, and passing between the hind legs of each, extended a tail that ended like a fish. So startling was this sight, which seemed a banner held aloft heralding unseen dangers, that the men felt threatened by a demon. But Marquette laughed at them and beckoned for the canoes to be brought together.

"What manner of thing is this, Sieur Jolliet?"

"A pair of manitous, evidently. If we had Indians with us, we should see them toss a little tobacco out as an offering in passing by."

"I cannot think," said Marquette, "that any Indian has been the designer. Good painters in France would find it hard to do as well. Besides this, the creatures are so high upon the rock that it was hard to get conveniently at them to paint them. And how could such colors be mixed in this wilderness?"

"We have seen what pigments and clays the Illinois used in daubing themselves. These wild tribes may have among them men with natural skill in delineating," said Jolliet.

"I will draw them off," Marquette determined, bringing out the papers on which he set down his notes; and while the men stuck their paddles in the water to hold the canoes against the current, he made his drawing.

One of the monsters seen by the explorers remained on those rocks until the middle of our own century. It was called by the Indians the Piasa. More than two centuries of beating winter storms had not effaced the brilliant picture when it was quarried away by a stupidly barbarous civilization. The town of Alton, in the state of Illinois, is a little south of that rock where the Piasa dragons were seen.

As the explorers moved ahead on glassy waters, they looked back, and the line of vision changing, they saw that the figures were cut into the cliff and painted in hollow relief.

They were still talking about the monsters when they heard the roar of a rapid ahead, and the limpid Mississippi turned southward on its course. It was as if they had never seen the great river until this instant. For a mighty flood, rushing through banks from the west, yellow with mud, noisy as a storm, eddying islands of branches, stumps, whole trees, took possession of the fair stream they had followed so long. It shot across the current of the Mississippi in entering so that the canoes danced like eggshells and were dangerously forced to the eastern bank. Afterwards they learned that this was the Pekitanoüi, or, as we now call it, the Missouri River, which flows into the Mississippi not far above the present city of St. Louis; and that by following it to its head waters and making a short portage across a prairie, a man might in time enter the Red or Vermilion Sea of California.

Having slipped out of the Missouri's reach, the explorers were next threatened by a whirlpool among rocks before they reached the mouth of Ouaboukigou, the Ohio River. They saw purple, red, and violet earths, which ran down in streams of color when wet, and a sand which stained their paddles like blood. Tall canes began to feather the shore, and mosquitoes tormented them as they pressed on through languors of heat. Jolliet and Marquette made awnings of sails which they had brought as a help to the paddles. They were floating down the current of the muddy, swollen river when they saw Indians with guns on the east shore. The voyageurs dropped their paddles and seized their own weapons. Marquette stood up and spoke to the Indians in Huron. They made no answer. He held up the white calumet. Then they began to beckon, and when the party drew to land, they made it clear that they had themselves been frightened until they saw the Blackrobe holding the calumet. A long-haired tribe, somewhat resembling the Iroquois, but calling themselves Tuscaroras; they were rovers, and had axes, hoes, knives, beads, and double glass bottles holding gunpowder, for which they had traded with white people eastward.

They fed the French with buffalo meat and white plums, and declared it was but a ten days' journey to the sea. In this they were mistaken, for it was more than a thousand miles to the Gulf of Mexico.